The Furrowed Brow
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The blog for the afternoon news and current affairs programme presented by Eddie Mair.
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Now this is serious:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7382750.stm
"The threat of a nuclear attack on the UK in the 1950s caused concern over the supply of tea, top-secret documents which have now been released reveal."
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
And Peter Donaldson was to be the last voice we heard, I believe. Sobering thought.
In the days of Protest and Survive, I was scared rigid by the prospect of nuclear war. Somehow I feel the young generation of today don't even give it a thought. Is this the defining feature of current day middle age, I wonder?
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Funny you should mention Fritzl, David, I was thinking of bringing that topic to the Brow today.
Incest is one of those topics that really touches a raw nerve with just about everybody I know, yet we are all expected to love our family. How does the invisible line become defined for most people? How do some people ignore it and, using their position of power, abuse family members?
This topic has troubled me since, during my teaching days, I had to deal with a situation where a father was abusing his own daughter (and yes, she was his child). While there was a good deal of circumstantial evidence, and testimony by others, the daughter would not open up - she had not, at the time, reached the age of puberty, and it was a very delicate balancing act that had to be performed by the various agencies involved in the case.
In this case, the mother was clearly turning a blind eye, while the father 'bribed' his daughter, favouring her over his other child, and giving her a position of supreme importance within the family. For example, he would take her, alone with him, on trips all over the world, and she had everything material that she wanted. She was also consulted, above her mother, in major family decisions.
I don't pretend to enter into the psyche of this child (as she was then), but I can perhaps understand how seductive this situation was for her. Many attempts were made to encourage her to give up her secret. She had revealed the situation to another child, but refused to speak of it to others. Her mother steadfastly kept her silence.
Her father finally took his child away from the school, having realised that he was under suspicion. Whatever happened to her I never knew, but I cannot imagine that it has been easy for her to deal with adulthood and more normal relationships with other, non family, males.
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BS 4,
At least you got to read mine before it was 'modded'. To touchy a topic for a Bank Holiday, I guess.
I got the info from a letter in today's Independent (I think it is still there. .....Yep, it is.) A woman who was married to a German said that lots of people in post-war Germany and Austria built large basements in case of nuclear attack during the Cold War. It was accepted as the thing to do.
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Hm, I didn't see the problem, David - and, in any case, it was true, this was something commonly done in countries like Austria and Switzerland (do I recall that all Swiss homes had a bunker funded by the State?)
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BS 6,
I haven't been informed yet by 'the powers that be' as to the offense I committed. Maybe once they read my second post they will reconsider.
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BS 6,
PS Maybe I should ask Robin, who lives around the corner and says he works for this blog, to look into it.
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BS 6,
We had an Archie Bunker in the US.
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Certainly, every Swiss village and town had nuclear bunkers for the population. Some of them are now being converted for other uses. Interesting that a country which, at the time, did had not given women full suffrage, took more care of its citizens than Britain. But then Churchill was going to sacrifice all the old men in the Home Guard for the defence of London so perhaps we should not be surprised.
A woman in a cellar with teenage children should be able to overpower a 70 year old man but didn't. How does one even begin to understand those controlling processes.
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DMcN @ 8, if you know somebody who might actually be both able and prepared to explain any of the reasoning behind the apparently arbitrary censorship on this blog, do ask! I have been modded on the MacCann thread apparently for mentioning the MacCanns, which is clearly pretty stupid, and then modded again for saying that I had been modded.
Not getting an explanation is standard: that was a couple of days ago and I have had none, and in fact of the dozen or more modded I've had an explanation given for only one -- and that explanation was simply not true, since it was offered as an excuse well after *I* had told *them* that what I had posted was a song by one of their own producers, which they clearly hadn't known.
If you get any explanation it would be modded the moment you posted it, I suppose, but it is worth a try.
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Big Sister (3) In those days, nuclear war was perceived as an imminent danger - and we seem to have had a narrow escape. These days, the greatest threat to us all is perceived to be a flu pandemic. The one that occurred during the First World War killed more people than the war itself.
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"Robin of the Blog"? Does he wear Lincoln Green?
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Gillianian: Yes, and I was a fully paid up member of CND at the time. In the end, after several years, I had to give up as too much knowledge can be a bad thing.
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Molesworth (are you the junior or the senior one, btw?): Thanks, glad I remembered correctly.
As to the woman overpowering her father, I think we have to accept that she was inhibited by her own natural impulses, in a way which he, quite clearly, wasn't.
I find it so hard to get my head around this. The events were wrong at so many different levels.
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Big Sister (15) Apparently, the daughter, Elisabeth, had tried to escape when she was 18, but the police found her, and she was brought back - it seems no-one was concerned enough to invistigate the reasons why she had run away. It is said that the neighbours were in fear of ''the landlord's revenge'' and Elisabeth was apparently told she would be gassed if she tried to escape again. Once she had her children to consider, she must have felt even more afraid of her father's vengeance.
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The escapes (and I think there were more than one) occurred, from what I understand, before she was interred in the cellar. But I think the question was more about why she didn't attack (or overcome) her father, and that was why I answered as I did. I suspect that most children would not attack a parent, even in such circumstances, unless they themselves were suffering from a severe mental disorder. From what we hear, Elizabeth's reactions to different things sound pretty normal, and her action in concealing a note in her daughter's clothing seem to demonstrate that her thinking processes were pretty normal too.
I must say that I'm looking forward to hearing more from her about her coping mechanisms. The whole incident is very disturbing, but I think there are interesting things to be learned from it.
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Gordon Brown and his senior ministers know that as wind power is too unstable to be connected to the national grid our power stations still burn the same amount of fossil fuel on windy days as they do on windless days, and that rooftop micro-generators (wind & solar) not only don’t save one iota of fossil fuel but will never recover the householders cost, yet they are still willing to spend over £7bn on such follies just to save face.
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This is a place for SERIOUS talk?
Sequin and Eddie - you do realise when I run up against that dictum - I actually adjust my facial features - to look serious! lol.
Nah! I cannot keep this up. I am NOT Boris Johnson.
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CG 11,
'He' has only lived around the corner for a short time and I only met him because he helped me cut down a tree at the end of my garden. I haven't seen him since (our garden is 175 feet long). I can only take his word for it that he works 'here'. He looked honest enough.
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BS 13,
He wasn't wearing green the day he helped me cut down a tree.
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Mm, David, helped you cut down a tree, eh? Doesn't sound like a techie to me.
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Big Sis and molesworth minor: don't forget we are talking about a deeply traumatized person here. We cannot expect her to have behaved 'normally'.
David McN: re modding - there is a queue!
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BS 22,
His next door neighbor helped as well as the tree was leaning against his fence. It was Rs day off from techie stuff. (He says he knows Rupert.)
Sid 23,
I got the email about it this morning. I still can't figure out which reason from the list caused it to be modded.
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DMcN @ 24, I now have one email relating to one of the two posts modded out in the McCann thread, and it offers me I think it's ten possible reasons for the removal, plus two so woolly that they cover *anything* anyone might write.
Blogsy please note, if they don't say what is wrong with the post, what the blue thundering blazes is the point of inviting me to rewrite it to omit the thing that caused offence? if I am not told what is wrong, how can I change what is wrong? If a child or a dog were brought up with this sort of arbitrary behaviour from its parent or owner, it would become psychotic in short order.
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On my system the Brow held to be the latest one, if I click on the link to Brows to the right, here, is dated 28th April.
Browsing, I found this one.
Since it has a mix of subjects may I introduce another?
If you recall when the Tories came to power in 1978 it was largely on the back of dissatisfaction with the Labour government (the Winter of Discontent and kow towing to the IMF and all that). Again in 1998 it was dissatisfaction with the government with a PM who came across like a nonce that got Labour elected. (Their leader was personable but Labour 'policy' at that time comprised an across the board commitment to continuing Tory policies.)
So discontent with a government is sufficient ( given the smallest degree of wit on the part of the opposition) to ensure its defeat.
Thatcher's council house sales policy was the single most effective anti - socialist thing that the Tories have ever done. It is so hard to reverse without widespread public ownership.
Many tenants however could not afford to buy of course, despite the knock down prices.
Some who bought thought they had got a bargain but because they were on low income that proved to be a chimera. House maintenance is expensive.
Those who won out were in two groups. They were firstly those who held on and held on and then benefited from a house price inflation so that they could move from parts of London, say, in process of gentrification, to a cheaper part of the country (or world) and pocket the difference.
Secondly there were those who naturally (ie without the council house sale) would have 'bettered themselves' via employment success. Instead of having to buy a house on a middle class estate from scratch they had a quarter or half or more of its value handed to them.
'Unto him that hath;' it was given and ' unto him that hath not' well, he got nothing.
So what will Cameron's nest egg policy be?
I suggest (and if it's true and the Tories say they first got the idea from The Furrowed Brow, so help me, I'll join Al Qieda) it's the sale of the BBC.
Or rather the gift of shares in the BBC to licence payers in proportion to the number of years they have been paying (as of 10 years ago and including the deceased if they really want to get nasty).
The shares can be bought and SOLD in the usual way (hence the nest egg bonus to long term licence payers)
The BBC is then obliged to generate a profit from the licence money which accrues to shareholders which makes their sale attractive. Government thus in effect guarantees a profit stream to these non - voting shares, the amount each year to be decided by an absurdly highly paid quango that compares profit in other media companies with the Beeb.
Or perhaps that's the Labour Party's version of the plan - got out as soon as they realise that's what Cameron intends to do.
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I came across a disturbing fact of life this last (Bank Holiday) weekend.
Walking on a public footpath to a ruined Priory which is a Grade 1 Scheduled Monument, which attracts National Trust funds and which is truly in the heart of the countryside, with the nearest village some miles away, I found my way blocked.
It was blocked by someone who claimed to represent the 'owner' of the NATIONAL MONUMENT.
It was a deep shock to me to find that such a site could conceivably be in private hands which do not allow any sort of general public access to the monument.
I am not naming names just now because I want to consider how realistic and acceptable the 'private plans' with which the National Trust is cooperating, actually are.
At this stage, may I just ask you all, is it really reasonable that the nation be denied access to one of its own monuments because it is privately owned?
I ask because in this case I can see no reason whatsoever, physical or social, why there is not universal access to this particular monument.
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poshmissusmac @ 27, if you were on a public footpath that is a right of way, I'm not sure how legal it was for anyone to forbid you to use it. Wasn't there a case fairly recently in which Madonna discovered that she couldn't just shut a right of way footpath that went across some land she'd bought?
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Please would someone in control of this Blog's configuration add this week's Furrowed Brow (this one) to the category sidebar so that it can be accessed via that point as well as by going backwards from the sixth of May?
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From Poshmissusmac:
A Question of Trust.
May I go further?
Imagine yourself following a footpath in woodland supported and advertised in the literature by the National Trust but without a single road sign post to where it is nor with clear directions in the NT Guide. (The Nature Reserve has two entrances it turns out on a B road easy to find and identify).
You suddenly see the ruins of a Priory. It bears the name of the locality (and of the woodland). However any village of that name has disappeared long ago. The locality name designates a few farms, (all bearing the locality name as 'Grange' or 'Farm' or Manor' etc) all on the outskirts of other real and substantial villages.
On every side of the path you follow the land owners have put barbed wire up. Indeed they have even put it along hand rails one uses to cross some styles and streams on the path.
At one field gate (not a farm entrance) which the path passes , there is even a CCTV camera and a warning about trespassers.
The Priory turns out to be adjacent to a set of farm buildings and 'owned' - by the farmer ?
As I told you it is a Grade 1 Scheduled National Monument.
Apparently, no one is allowed to leave the path to cross open land to see the Priory.
Despite there being a requirement to maintain it as it was inherited, a couple of monumental stones to a pet and to a family member now abut the 16th century tower.
The owner is a partner with a member of a well known building family in a local land sales company. The company appears merely to buy and sell large local estates.
The National Trust is helping this landlord to the tune of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds to preserve the monument.
He says (on line) that he wants a million to convert the Priory into a 'meeting room' for local people because he is shocked that there isn't one already.
Well, there are a number, in the adjoining villages, of church halls etc and none of these has surrounding properties with 'Keep Out' signs as this Priory does. Nor do the owners of these meeting halls have 'Keep Out' signs up on their own property as the 'owner' of this National Trust monument has on his.
Do you get my drift, as they say in the modern equivalent of the penny dreadfuls?
A 'meeting hall' built with well intentioned public funding which turns out not to have a purpose (since there is no local community) and so is re-designated (via a planning re-application) to be converted to....well, my guess would be the owner's living accommodation.
Everything points in that direction. The local authority to its credit has made a thorough inventory of the Priory remains at its web site . However it does say there that the Priory is in private hands, whilst I would be inclined to doubt the validity and certainly the morality of the original private acquisition of such a national monument. Further, the Council web site mis-describes the proximity of the Priory to the existing farm buildings.
They are some 50 metres away. There is, however some scaffolding in long term place almost next to the Priory walls. This mere scaffolding appears to be what the Council calls 'farm building' adjacent to the Priory.
Which they would be if they were allowed to be built there.
Let us hope they never are.
I need the help of you clever bloggers. What should my next move be to get the Priory properly in the public domain?
Whom can I trust ? The Council ? The National Trust ? The Ministry? After all someone somewhere ISN'T very trustworthy in this matter, otherwise the Priory would be open to all ramblers who wanted to visit it.
To whom should I reveal details like where exactly it is and who in real life I am?
Please help.
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Ah yes, poshmissus, I thought it was you! ;o)
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31. Touchee again then! You can note it again at the Brow for 12th May. I look forward to seeing it there, short and sweet.
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